A Murder of Crows (17 page)

His visitor was a man he had known for almost half of his life, but had only met for the first time two weeks before. A black man, about sixty years old and clean-shaven. His brown coat was a bit too big on him now, but looked as if it had fit him well at one time. A brown ski cap sat high on his head, revealing he was bald underneath it. He didn’t know if the man had always been bald or if it was the result of the chemotherapy treatments.

Despite knowing this man for over twenty years, Hicks didn’t know his real name, where he was from, if he was married or had any children.

In fact, the only thing Hicks knew about this man was the title the University had given him: The Dean.

T
HE
D
EAN
looked at him for a moment. “You cleaned yourself up. Good. I was going to suggest a change in appearance. I should have known you would have done so on your own.”

Hicks shut the door. “We’ve been worried about you, sir.”

But the Dean ignored the question. “I know you must be surprised to see me here, but since I authorized funding for this place, I decided it was time for me to see it with my own two eyes.”

Hicks didn’t care about where the Dean was now. He cared about where he had been. “Where have you been, sir? A lot has happened today, and it’s not safe for you to be walking around by yourself.”

“I know. In fact, I know more about what happened today than you do. I have been following everything as it happened on this.” He held up a handheld device a bit larger than the standard University model. “I designed this unit myself. It allows me to track the entirety of the OMNI system right from the palm of my hand.”

Hicks didn’t care about a new handheld device, either. “So why didn’t you respond when Jason tried to contact you, sir? We needed you today.”

“No, James, you only thought you did. You proved my irrelevance by your own actions. In fact, proving your own abilities to yourself was the point of the entire exercise and the reason why I am here now.”

“Exercise? What exercise, sir?”

The Dean lowered himself into an overstuffed chair next to the bookcase. A thin cloud of dust went into the air, which made him cough. “You need to get this place cleaned, James, and soon. I encountered less dust in Afghanistan.” He gestured toward one of the dining room chairs. “Please, take a seat.”

But Hicks remained standing. “What exercise are you talking about, sir?”

The Dean began pulling off his gloves one finger at a time. “The exercise I had to run in advance of my departure. The exercise that was my final lesson to you.”

Hicks didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “What lesson, sir?”

The Dean finished removing his gloves. “You do remember I informed you I was dying.”

“Of course I remember.”

“Since our last meeting two weeks ago, I have been a patient at Memorial Sloane Kettering here in Manhattan. Their best physicians conducted every test known to modern medicine and, despite their best efforts, their result matched those of the other doctors I have visited in other parts of the world. My condition is advanced to the point of being terminal.”

Hicks had felt compassion when he’d first learned of the man’s condition two weeks before. Now, all he felt was the heat spreading through his body. “What exercise are you talking about, sir?”

The Dean held up a hand. “Since chemotherapy would only prolong the inevitable and rob me of whatever dignity I have left, I have decided to end my life on my own terms. Tomorrow, to be precise. My reasons for the quick time frame are my own. And although our organization does not have many customs or ceremonies, it does have one: a new Dean must be in place before my departure or demise. You have inquired about the exercise I mentioned earlier. I needed to be certain my replacement was up to the task of being Dean. A real world exercise would test his mettle in the harshest conditions. Fortunately, for his sake and the sake of the University, my candidate passed with flying colors.”

He smiled. “Congratulations, James. I have decided to select you as my replacement as Dean.”

Heat continued to spread through his body. He grabbed the top of the dining room chair for support. He didn’t care about the promotion or the title or even that his mentor had told him he would be committing suicide tomorrow.

“You were behind all of this from the beginning, weren’t you? You’re the reason Stephens found me.”

“Hardly,” the Dean said. “I may be crafty, but I am not evil. Stephens tracked you to New York on his own. But as soon as we used OMNI to thwart the Barnyard’s surveillance of you, it alerted Stephens and Avery to the realization they were hunting someone who had not only grabbed their target and killed his cell, but also had technical means at their disposal. This is why they made the independent decision to send Stephens and his team to New York to hunt you down and bring you in for questioning.”

Hicks felt the presence of the Ruger beneath his left arm. He became aware of the options it gave him. Options he had never considered until learning of the Dean’s betrayal. “And you let them.”

“I was in no position to stop them,” the Dean admitted. “But after I saw how vehemently you disagreed with my decision to keep the Bajjah/Jabbar information from the Barnyard, I decided you and Roger needed to witness the true nature of the Barnyard for yourselves. So, I tracked you on OMNI, waited until you were both far enough away from the safe house and your respective destinations, and used back channels to tell Stephens where you both could be found. His ability to mobilize so quickly surprised me. He threw it together at the last minute, and it almost paid off.”

Hicks felt his left hand ball into a fist. “You told him where we were? You told him where to find us?”

“Yes, I did, and I hope you are not expecting an apology. I had to be sure you were ready to become the Dean, so a real-world demonstration of what is at stake seemed to be appropriate.”

But Hicks was still processing the abduction. “You told them about Roger’s past.”

The Dean waived it off. “Such information was nothing more than the worm on the hook to get Stephens to bite. None of it can lead him to Roger now. Roger had his fingerprints altered long ago and those on file from his youth have also been significantly altered. There is no way Stephens or anyone else can draw a distinction between the Fletcher of yesteryear and the Roger Cobb of today. As I said before, James, I might be crafty, but I am not evil.”

Hicks gripped the chair harder to prevent his hand from shaking. “What did you give them on me?”

“Nothing that can lead them to the James Hicks of today, I assure you.”

He felt the wood of the dining room chair begin to creak under his weight. “Your assurances don’t mean shit anymore.” He stopped squeezing the chair and stood on his own. “I’m going to ask this one more time. What did you give them on me?”

The Dean looked down at the gloves he had placed in his lap. “Old files from your youth. Pictures of you and your parents at your father’s skydiving school, but nothing more. I did not give him your real name and certainly not your military records. A crafty man like Stephens could have found a way to use them to trace who you are now.” He looked up at Hicks. “You have nothing to worry about, James. Your parents were the only family you had and they are long dead anyway. The remainder of your family is either distant or dead. You do not have anyone who can be used as leverage against you. Such circumstances make you ideal for this kind of work. Such qualities are the reasons why you will be the next Dean.”

Hicks flipped the dining room chair aside before he realized he’d done it. Dealing with the present was bad enough. Now he had to contend with someone knowing about his past. “You took one hell of a risk with our lives. Someone could’ve gotten killed. Me or Stephens or one of his men or Roger. They could’ve begun torturing Roger before I was able to stop them.”

“I admit it was a risk, but as you know well, risks come with this kind of work. I took no joy in what I did, but I had to make sure you understood the threat Stephens and his ilk posed to us before I named you as my replacement.”

“This was about your fucking legacy?”

“This was about the University, James. Our mission is far too important for me to leave to chance. I am dying and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I needed to be certain I was leaving this institution in the best possible hands. I needed to know you understood the Barnyard and their ilk pose as much of a threat to the University as the KGB did back during the Cold War.”

“Bullshit. We’ve worked with them in the past. You’ve handled them in the past.”

“Yes, but only to a point. You have never been much of a memo reader, James. Men like you need to experience something firsthand in order to truly appreciate it for what it is. You needed to see for yourself the lengths to which men like Stephens and Avery would go. I can understand why. Trusting in the perceived paranoid ranting of a dying old man never did anyone much good.”

The Dean went on. “Your success in breaking Bajjah proves the Jabbar organization is an active global threat the nature of which we are only beginning to grasp. We need time to investigate such a threat before we consider sharing information with the bureaucrats in Washington. We must keep dodging men like Stephens and Avery until we get a clearer picture of the Jabbar operation. You saw the how they reacted when they learned where you and Roger were located. They could have approached you another way. They could have attempted to open a dialogue with either or both of you. Instead, they attempted to grab you at gunpoint and interrogate you like common criminals.”

The Dean leaned forward in the seat and appeared to grow ten years younger as he did. “You cannot bargain or reason with them, James. Not on this. Not when it comes to Jabbar. Stephens and his people would not go after Jabbar until they knew where our leads came from. It would require them to waste valuable time investigating the University instead of Jabbar. Stephens and Avery and the bureaucrats who pull their strings would not rest until they knew everything about our organization and its abilities. They would not stop until they had brought every byte of information OMNI has ever generated under their control. Or worse, divided our resources among the various agencies.”

The Dean pounded the armrest of his chair, sending up another small puff of dust. “The University has proven itself far too important to have it parceled out among bickering bureaucrats like a horde of jackals pulling apart a gazelle. And we cannot allow our mission to be hindered by the staffer of some elected official who happens to be on the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee in Washington. You know I am right, James. And after today, you have seen the intention of our enemies within our own community.”

He had been angry with the Dean in the past. They had disagreed before, even to the point where Hicks was sure there was an excellent chance he might lose his position or maybe even his life. But this was different. This wasn’t a disagreement about funding an operation or killing a target. This was deeper and more complex. The Dean had betrayed him. He had betrayed Roger. And he had done it for a reason.

“Does Stephens or Avery know I work for the University?”

“I doubt Stephens even knows the University exists. Avery may have heard whispers and rumors over the years, but not even his superiors—to whom I spoke—know much about us. I think you will find obscurity can be a comfort for you now you are the Dean.”

There it was again, yet another event that should have been the highlight of his career lost in the mess of the Barnyard and Jabbar. His elevation to Dean of the University.

Hicks had never spent much time dwelling on his career. He had always been happy as a field man, running operations that generated actionable intelligence. He liked overseeing the corruption of influential people who could become permanent sources of information. He liked ordering Ringmasters and Snake Charmers to seduce those who needed to be corrupted in order to feed the University vital intelligence. He didn’t even mind the occasional bit of wet work when necessary.

Field work was the only kind of work Hicks had ever been good at. It was the only life he had ever known or wanted.

Which was why he said, “Get someone else, sir. I don’t want the fucking job. I’m busy enough as it is.”

“Your reluctance makes you the best person for the job. Duty rarely comes at the time and manner of our choosing, James. There are plenty of people who would want this position. There are some in our organization who have crafted their entire careers in the hopes they might get this position one day. You are not one of those people. You remain focused on the mission, which is something a Dean must do.”

He held out his handheld device to him. “When I became Dean, the future of the University was in technology. I helped bring the future to this institution.” He looked again at the Ruger in the holster beneath Hicks’ left arm. “Now, we need someone to defend the future I helped create. A field man. You.”

Hicks looked at the device for a long time. His anger with the Dean had died down. Everything the man had said had been right, even if he didn’t like the way he’d made his point.

He may not have given any thought to being Dean before, but as the Dean he could affect some of the changes he’d been thinking about. Changes like sharing the Jabbar information with Stephens in exchange for the Barnyard leaving the University alone.